# Sacrifice bad cops to Baal; to expiate American racism. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 29, 2020, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641 "2020-05-29T03:32:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/21 "2020-05-29T13:37:14Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Call me an idealist but I don’t feel we have to make a choice between whether we kill black people or kill police officers. I can imagine a system where nobody gets killed. Kinda serious question: How do they keep other gangs from tearing rival gang members to bits? And why wouldn’t such strategies be effective in protecting the lives of convicted police officers/protecting the lives of other prisoners from the inevitable police gangs? I obviously have no respect for any ostensibly ‘good’ organization that tolerates, even celebrates its members targeting and murdering vulnerable citizens (notice how they leave the armed and obviously unhinged ones alone?), for the same reason I’m also not into tossing any human to the lions. I also don’t think punishments need to be harsher for the ones that get caught, just visible and consistent. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > … eh, what’s a better word? “Example”. Which is also wrong-headed. No ‘examples’, just visible and consistent consequences for each guilty individual according to their particular wrongdoing. No way should one cop burn for the wrongs done by his colleagues in and out of uniform–they should all go down according to what the law would do to any one of us for the same crimes. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/22 "2020-05-29T13:49:21Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > A death sentence may be warranted and lawfully carried out, but it will nonetheless have the character of a lynching in my mind. It won’t, as Minnesota doesn’t have the death penalty. A prison sentence for a murder committed on camera isn’t a lynching. Your argument is illogical and disjointed. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/23 "2020-05-29T14:06:52Z")
Nothing about this is especially logical. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/24 "2020-05-29T14:24:04Z")
Criminal justice reform and actual reparations on a national level, whether to black communities or individuals or a combination thereof, would be expiative of American racism in at least a partial and tentative way. Other structural changes to erase, criminalize and reverse institutional racism would of course have to be enacted and lived with for more than a generation to fully move beyond that American sin. Ritualized destruction of the guilty is a sort of attempted atonement by proxy which modern societies can’t practice. Trying to shunt responsibility and accountability for an entire society onto a few individuals is the opposite of expiation. Also, sacrifices are meaningless if they’re of things no longer valued by the community. Like dead goats bereft of wool and meat, or like disgraced and fired LEOs. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/25 "2020-05-29T15:34:18Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Nothing about this is especially logical. Admitting it is the first step. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/26 "2020-05-29T19:36:29Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > I don’t give a shit what happens to murderers in prison. Sorry if that horrifies you. They shouldn’t get privileges like protective custody. Throw them in gen pop. Everyone is entitled to the equal protection of the law. There should never be any individuals or any groups that we declare that’s it okay to commit crimes against. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/27 "2020-05-29T19:41:10Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > Kinda serious question: How do they keep other gangs from tearing rival gang members to bits? And why wouldn’t such strategies be effective in protecting the lives of convicted police officers/protecting the lives of other prisoners from the inevitable police gangs? It’s much harder to commit a crime in prison than it is out in the public. We maintain a level of law enforcement in prison that would be unimaginable out in the regular world. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/28 "2020-05-29T19:48:25Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Maybe scapegoat isn’t the right word… they’d take a goat, put tokens with the sins of everybody in the tribe around its neck and send it out into the desert… eh, what’s a better word? How about “Convicted in a court of law using rules of evidence and then given a custodial sentence in keeping with the seriousness of the crime” This may be too many words for you to wrap your head around though. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/29 "2020-05-29T19:51:43Z")
And yes, your choice of word “scapegoat” was really, really stupid. A scapegoat has done nothing wrong whatsoever. That’s the meaning of it. The scapegoat is sent off, or killed, as atonement for something it HAS NOT DONE. Your use of the word implied that the officer that killed the man by deliberately kneeling on him and cutting off his oxygen supply, was completely, totally, 100% innocent. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/30 "2020-05-29T20:15:45Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Everyone is entitled to the equal protection of the law. There should never be any individuals or any groups that we declare that’s it okay to commit crimes against. Declaring we should give equal protection to everyone while also advocating for privileges for a certain class is hypocritical at best. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/31 "2020-05-29T21:22:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Everyone is entitled to the equal protection of the law. There should never be any individuals or any groups that we declare that’s it okay to commit crimes against. Tell that to George Floyd. If the murdering cop goes to prison (and it looks increasingly likely that he will) if someone puts him in a chokehold or sinks a shiv into him, I would have no trouble looking the other way. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/32 "2020-05-29T21:49:27Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > Tell that to George Floyd. If the murdering cop goes to prison (and it looks increasingly likely that he will) if someone puts him in a chokehold or sinks a shiv into him, I would have no trouble looking the other way. Eh, it’s excusable to feel how you feel–he will have died in a way that he himself felt fair on some level. But I would ask you: in your opinion, what is it about murder that makes it wrong? (I’m assuming you do think murder is wrong) And what makes it ok to murder one person but not another? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/33 "2020-05-29T21:53:03Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > Tell that to George Floyd. If the murdering cop goes to prison (and it looks increasingly likely that he will) if someone puts him in a chokehold or sinks a shiv into him, I would have no trouble looking the other way. I don’t see how that’s any different than what the cops who stood by and watched Derek Chauvin kill George Floyd did. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/34 "2020-05-29T21:54:31Z")
I for one, do not think that trying and convicting this dude for the murder he committed in any way makes up for, undoes, or absolves society of its problems with historical racism. I also don’t think that extralegal punishment is required. Which sort of includes wishes for him to be shanked in the yard. I also don’t think that anybody’s going to be able to convict the onlookers of murder - though if they can, more power to them. The assholes should all be fired, and banned from police work, of course. (Though they wouldn’t be.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/35 "2020-05-29T21:54:33Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#): > > Declaring we should give equal protection to everyone while also advocating for privileges for a certain class is hypocritical at best. I’m confused. Are you saying I’ve advocated for privileges for a certain class? If so, could you explain what you mean. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/36 "2020-05-29T22:00:44Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > And yes, your choice of word “scapegoat” was really, really stupid. > > A scapegoat has done nothing wrong whatsoever. That’s the meaning of it. The scapegoat is sent off, or killed, as atonement for something it HAS NOT DONE. > > Your use of the word implied that the officer that killed the man by deliberately kneeling on him and cutting off his oxygen supply, was completely, totally, 100% innocent. Well excuse me, poor word choice on my part. The thought process there revolves around all the capital punishment talk around the case. More and more I have come to see capital punishment as a kind of human sacrifice. Who’s on the receiving end of those? Well, Baal for one. Obviously in the OT this kind of thing was a Big Bad, and the impulse got transmuted into the scapegoat sacrifice, and you know where it evolved from there. So I was not suggesting innocence, I was referring to the history of sacrifice. Of course the whole thing is highly morally questionable- “I hope they sacrifice them to Baal live in CNN” is the kind of crazy thing one says when really upset, plus for me is a but of shorthand that it isn’t a moral suggestion. I am already pretty sad lately watching the virus disaster play out. When I learned about this story, it literally made me weep. Then I was hitting the roof, then very sad for the people directly affected by this as I am nowhere near the area. You could translate the whole rant as, “I don’t know how to express how upset I am that these things keep happening.” ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/37 "2020-05-29T22:06:03Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > I don’t give a shit what happens to murderers in prison. Sorry if that horrifies you. They shouldn’t get privileges like protective custody. Throw them in gen pop. > [@cochrane](#): > > Fuck 'em. I’m not gonna lose any sleep if anything happens. If Minnesota still had the death penalty, I’d be fine with that. And you really don’t see how sick, twisted, and wrong that viewpoint is? Wow. > [@Gyrate](#): > > We don’t refrain from barbarism and cruelty because others are good. We do it because **we’re** supposed to be. > [@Gyrate](#): > > Hey, you do you, man. As long as you don’t actually hurt or kill anyone, obvs. Well said. As I’ve posted more than once on this site, we are supposed to be better than the monsters we abhor. I might add: And as long as **cohrane** doesn’t encourage or support anyone else illegally hurting someone or murdering someone. You know, like twitler’s getting disciplined by Twitter for doing: encouraging illegal violence. ---
**Author:** ![Happytree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happytree/32/3555_2.png) [@Happytree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happytree)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/38 "2020-05-29T23:53:39Z")
Yeah, i don’t know where you’re getting the idea that there will be any justice served. We have a really bad track record for stuff like this. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2020, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/39 "2020-05-30T00:32:15Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m confused. Are you saying I’ve advocated for privileges for a certain class? If so, could you explain what you mean. You just argued against police officers being put in gen pop. Maybe you could explain how you want equal protection, but also protective custody for criminals that happened to be police officers at the time. ETA: If cops get extra protection in prison, why shouldn’t everyone else? ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2020, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641/40 "2020-05-30T00:44:41Z")
> [@](#): > > If cops get extra protection in prison, why shouldn’t everyone else? That extra protection is not a privilege. It’s supposedly a means of protecting someone from a credible threat. AFAIK, it’s not only convicted cops who get such protection if there is a credible threat against that prisoner. Of course the ideal prison would have everyone safe from harm while incarcerated. That is rather pollyannish to hope for though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sacrifice-bad-cops-to-baal-to-expiate-american-racism/854641.md?page=3)